Using WordPress on AWS EC2 Free Tier

Published February 24, 2012 | By Adam Craig Johnston

Here is a guide on how to setup WordPress on Amazon EC2 Free Tier

Setup

Sign up for a AWS Account at http://aws.amazon.com/
Sign up for a Amazon EC2 at http://aws.amazon.com/ec2
Sign into the AWS Console
Choose a Region before launching your new EC2 instance.
Create EC2 Linux Micro Instance for WordPress:
To start a new EC2 instance click on the Launch Instance button.
In the “Request Instances Wizard” tab to the Community AMI’s then filter using “wordpress” then choose the AMI:

bitnami-wordpress-3.1-0-linux-ubuntu-10.04-ebs (ami-30f18f62)
For your Free instance, choose the number of instances: 1, Availability Zone: No Preference and Instance Type: Micro (t1 micro, 613MB).
Shutdown Behavior option should be stop, and all other options Use Default.
Add in a tag key = Name and value = Webserver.
Create a new Key Par call it the name of the website then create and save this file somewhere on your local machine that can be grabbed latter. E.g xyz.pem
Adjust Security Groups,

Add rules for SSH, HTTP, HTTPS but leave the source as 0.0.0.0/0
Now Lunch the instance
Assign Elastic IP then Associate Address with your EC2 Instance
Click on Instances within the EC2 console to find the Public DNS.
Install Open SSH on Windows
Set pem file to Read by owner

chmod 400 xyz.pem
SSH in to the instance

ssh -i xyz.pem bitnami@ec2-<public DNS>.ap-southeast-1.compute.amazonaws.com
Move WordPress to run at the root of the apache web server by editing httpd.conf file using vi

sudo vi /opt/bitnami/apache2/conf/httpd.conf

DocumentRoot “/opt/bitnami/apache2/htdocs”

To

DocumentRoot “/opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress/htdocs”

<Directory />

Options Indexes MultiViews +FollowSymLinks

AllowOverride All

Order allow,deny

Allow from all

</Directory>

<Directory “/opt/bitnami/apache2/htdocs”>

To

<Directory “/opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress/htdocs”>

Comment out:

#Include “/opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress/conf/wordpress.conf”
Create an .htaccess file for WordPress

This also enables you to have pretty permalinks like myblog.com/tour

Add .htaccess file to WordPress dir

in /opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress/htdocs/.htaccess

# BEGIN WordPress

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>

RewriteEngine On

RewriteBase /

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !=/server-status

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d

RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

</IfModule>

# END WordPress
Configure WordPress to know its own DNS entry

sudo vi /opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress/htdocs/wp-config.php

define(‘WP_HOME’, ‘http://www.ringio.com’);

define(‘WP_SITEURL’, ‘http://www.ringio.com’);
Install Filezila

Public DNS

SSH Username: bitnami

Password: <Blank>
delete the /opt/bitnami/updateip file. Otherwise, restarting the instance, Bitnami resets the wp_options values to the Public DNS server name.

sudo rm /opt/bitnami/updateip
Install EMS MySQL Manager

How to Connect to BitNami MySQL Remotely

http://wiki.bitnami.org/cloud/how_to_connect_to_your_amazon_instance#How_to_connect_to_the_BitNami_MySQL_remotely.3f
Run this SQL script to set the Pubic IP Address with WordPress

update wp_options set option_value = ‘http://www.agileweboperations.com’ where option_name in (‘siteurl’, ‘home’);
Configure WordPress with the Pubic IP Address

sudo vi /opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress/htdocs/wp-config.php

define(‘WP_HOME’, ‘http://www.ringio.com’);

define(‘WP_SITEURL’, ‘http://www.ringio.com’);
Reboot the instance
In your Browser type the public ip and see if WordPress is running correctly at Root Directory
Login into Woresspress using default bitnami username

Username: user

Password: bitnami
Add a new use into WordPress with Role of Administrator
Then remove default bitnami username from WordPress by login in as your new username
Make a DNS A record for the domain host provider, and use the elastic IP.

Migration

Both wordpress on your old site and on AWS are the same due to database compatible issues
Copy your \wp-content\upload from your old site locally to reload on AWS

sudo chmod 755 /opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress/htdocs/wp-content/

Install and download all plugins to your AWS Worspress instance
Download or install your old theme and plugins
Export your Old WordPress database using MyPHPAdmin
Run the Export SQL Script on the AWS WordPress Instance using your Remote SQL Manager
The rerun the SQL script to set the Pubic IP Address with WordPress

update wp_options set option_value = ‘http://www.agileweboperations.com’ where option_name in (‘siteurl’, ‘home’);

To Finish

When your domain has delegated run this script again with your domain

update wp_options set option_value = ‘http://www.website.com’ where option_name in (‘siteurl’, ‘home’);
Configure WordPress with the Pubic IP Address

sudo vi /opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress/htdocs/wp-config.php

define(‘WP_HOME’, ‘http://www.website.com’);

define(‘WP_SITEURL’, ‘http://www.website.com’);